We are as prone to make a torment
of our fears, as to luxuriate in our hopes of good. If it be asked,
Why we do so, the best answer will be, Because we cannot help it. The
sense of power is as strong a principle in the mind as the love of
pleasure. Objects of terror and pity exercise the same despotic control
over it as those of love or beauty. It is as natural to hate as to
love, to despise as to admire, to express our hatred or contempt, as
our love or admiration:
Masterless passion sways us to the mood
Of what it likes or loathes.
Not that we like what we loathe: but we like to indulge our hatred and
scorn of it, to dwell upon it, to exasperate our idea of it by every
refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of illustration, to make it
a bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to others in all the splendour
of deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatize it by name,
to grapple with it in thought--in action, to sharpen our intellect,
to arm our will against it, to know the worst we have to contend with,
and to contend with it to the utmost.
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